A squirrel selfie backfired on a Maine teenager over the weekend when the rodent got freaked out by the phone's flash and attacked.

Brian Genest, 17, was in Florida visiting colleges with his mother last week when the squirrel selfie disaster went down. The mother and son duo was walking through John Chestnut Sr. Park in Palm Harbor, Florida, when Genest spotted the critter and tried to call it over by making clicking sounds.

"Next thing I knew, the squirrel was on my shoulder, then under my shirt, and then hanging off my back!" he said. "I just started flailing around. The only way I could get it off me was I ended up doing a stop-drop-and-roll kind of thing."

As Genest struggled with the squirrel, his mother, Paula Wright, snapped a series of photos of her son writhing around.